Tweed canegrower Robert Quirk says he'd have preferred a carbon credit system which would have allowed farmers to get credit for the carbon their farms store.

"A tax is a tax. I would have preferred farmers to be able to exchange their credits directly with big business but we have what we have and it's up to us to make the most of it as farmers."

Robert Quirk has done more than most farmers to prepare.

Counting the carbon

With the help of a consultant from Adelaide, he calculated the carbon footprint of his farm, adding up fertiliser inputs, fuel, electricity and cane-firing etc.

It turned out his farm absorbs more carbon than it produces.

"All-in-all I was five tonnes negative for inputs against outputs."

Mr Quirk is expecting that electricity and fuel prices will rise a little. He hasn't estimated what the increase might be, but he's philosophical.

"At some stage we'll find out what is going to happen.

"I would think as a farmer (my costs) will be fairly minimal. It will be hundreds (of dollars) rather than thousands I would think."

$400,000 cost

The Clarence Valley Council's general manager Scott Greensill, says the council has done as much home work as it can based on estimates produced by the state government.

"But I think like most people until you see it actually flow on through the costs in our system it's a bit hard to exactly know what the impact is going to be."

The council estimates the carbon tax will cost it $400,000 per year.

"The big one is electricity and then we look at some of the costs associated with construction materials such as steel and bitumen and the like, so we're looking at ways of actually reducing and becoming more efficient to offset those costs."

The electricity price rise doesn't include the cost of replacement of poles and wires that will also increase costs from this month.

Other unknown

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has allowed the council to increase rates by 3.6 percent increase this year.

Of that 0.4 percent is an allowance for the carbon tax.

"Indications are that that will be significantly less than we require."

The other unknown is the council's tips.

Any landfill that produces more than 25,000 tonnes of methane per year will be slugged and the Clarence Valley is right on the cusp.

Potential liability

"Some indications are saying we're not captured in that, others are saying we are.

"If we are captured, however we're really looking at a potential liability of $800- $900000 a year.

"We can reduce that significantly by changing our practices and we've started doing that with our new refuse collection services with a

very heavy focus on recycling and composting, and that will take a lot of the organic matter out of the tip and then reduce carbon emissions.

"And also initiatives such as capturing the gas and flaring to reduce emissions and with efficiencies, and that all adds we expect through those type of efficiency gains we will be able to reduce the cost quite significantly."

Carbon tax not a shoe-in

Meghan Hogan runs a boutique shoe shop with her sister in Kyogle.

She says she wasn't a fan of the idea when it was first announced.

"I was very worried about how it might impact on our business"

She says she thinks twice about putting the air conditioning on, and switching off lights.

"Electricity would be our major cost as far as the carbon tax impacting."

"Most of the items we sell are imported from overseas so how that will impact I'm not sure, I can't really see it but who knows?"

Meghan Hogan says customers are more cautious since the carbon tax was announced.

"Being in a small country town I definitely think it's the carbon tax because a lot of things haven't actually physically changed in our town, a lot of people still have work, it hasn't impacted the GFC I think it is the talk of the carbon tax (that's affecting customer confidence.)"